Roberta Williams' King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride

The Good
King's Quest VII marks a new generation of Sierra adventure games where titles were no longer being distributed on floppy disks and the games themselves were becoming completely different. Like with the last game, series creator Roberta Williams had someone on board to help her with the design. Seeing as it was Jane Jensen, you would think that would be the case here. But Jensen was getting ready to film The Beast Within, so the reigns were handed over to Lorelai Shannon, who I believe was new to Sierra at the time.

King's Quest VII was the first and only CD-ROM title by Sierra to be shipped in two versions. The initial version was rushed out in time for Christmas 1994 and was a buggy mess, to the point where gamers had to install numerous patches so that they could complete the game. I wrote a scathing review based on my experiences of this first version. A year later, Sierra released a second version that not only removes the bugs, but also added some tweaks to the gameplay.

After delivering a little musical number, Princess Rosella of Daventry is lectured by her mother, Queen Valanice, about the advantages of marriage. Not interested in the conversation, she approaches a pond and gazes into it. Having seen image of a castle caused by a seahorse-like creature, Rosella decides to jump in. Valanice goes in after her and they both end up in a portal, where the two desperately try to reach out to each other. As soon as their hands are about to connect, however, another hand appears out of nowhere, snatches Rosella's hand, and pulls her into another dimension.

The first thing that I noticed about King's Quest VII is that it moves away from hand-painted backgrounds in favor of traditional animation reminiscent to Disney films, and you get a taste of it within the game's introduction. It features some stunning backgrounds, with my favorites being the pumpkin house in Ooga-Booga Land, Dreamland, and Etheria. The animation was so complicated that Sierra got help from animation houses that were located overseas. For instance, the aforementioned intro was done by the same people who did the game animations for the CD-i Zelda games. Some of the locations are based on popular culture. Ooga-Booga Land is a reference to Tim Burton's “A Nightmare Before Christmas”, and I think that Etheria is based on either Care Bears or My Little Pony.

Unlike Roberta Williams' previous offerings, King's Quest VII is divided into six chapters, with you playing Valanice in the odd chapters and Rosella the even ones. Since the two protagonists have different tasks in the game – with Valanice trying to search for her daughter, while Rosella finding some way to stop a volcano from erupting – it would make sense to only play odd- or even-numbered chapters, especially if you can't stand either of them. Personally, I don't like Rosella now as she is a far cry from the same girl in previous KQ offerings. She was more mature back then, but she now comes across as a whiny broad who doesn't think twice about her actions.

The interface in King's Quest VII is designed in such a way that it's actually easier for the player to get used to. There are no icons to be seen, but a single mouse cursor resembling a wand that changes depending on what the player hovers over. There are a few objects that the protagonists can interact with, and hovering over these causes the wand to sparkle. Hovering the wand over a doorway and it doesn't change to a sparkling wand, but an arrow indicating the direction the protagonists can travel.

What I found neat about the interface is when you click an inventory item over the icon that resembles an eye, a 3-D representation of it appears in a window. You can then rotate it back and forth, and manipulate it as well. Next to the eye icon is the control panel. Here, the options are self-explanatory. I like how the game records your progress, so you always know how far will it be until the next chapter begins.

The puzzles in King's Quest VII are quite easy, since the solution to them is nearby. At the start of the game, you have to drain the pool so that you can grab one of the pieces from a statue's offering bowl, and the instructions on how to do this is written on a huge, gold statue next to the pool. Some characters will even point what item you need to do something critical to your progress. From my experience, no puzzle should take you more than ten minutes to complete. Finally, there are multiple to solve puzzles as well, especially in chapter one.

The Bad
I have no problem with the simplified interface, but why does it take up nearly half the screen. Why couldn't it be much smaller and restricted to the very bottom of the screen. A similar tactic is used in later Sierra games like Phantasmagoria and Torin's Passage, so we have to get used to it eventually, right?

Some of the dialogue is either weird or doesn't make sense at all. In one scene, you are supposed to bring the “Treasure” bird back to the owner of the china shop. When you do, the resulting dialogue implies that he wants to go into the back of the shop so that he can have sex with it. (Personally, I don't blame him. That bird is so hot, but I digress.)

The old edge-of-the-screen trick where, in the early KQ games, you need to leave the screen and re-enter it if you find something unexpected, makes a return in King's Quest VII. In most cases, particularly in chapter one, this is not an issue. However, it can be a problem later. You have to deal with this fucking dog that belongs to the antagonist, and you must enter her house, but you can't while that stupid mongrel is barking. The game is scripted in such a way that it can take forever for the dog to calm down.

I really hate the shitty save system where you are allowed only one save game. Sure, it's ideal if the same version of the game is played by other family members such as yourself, but it means that if you made a mistake, you can't undo that mistake unless you actually go back to the menu (choosing to “Bookmark your current game and quit” first) and restore. I would have liked to save individual games in the scenes that I enjoyed exploring.

The Bottom Line
And there we say goodbye to the royal family of Daventry as Williams decided to take the KQ series in a new direction, one that defies the “no violence” rule that she established years ago before the first game was made. In my opinion, the seventh instalment features stunning graphics and a beautiful soundtrack, and the ability to control more than one protagonist is okay, and this is the one feature carried over to The Beast Within. However, the game suffers from problems such as a poor script and a lousy save system. After King's Quest VII, Williams and Shannon went on to create both Phantasmagoria games individually.